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I'd pointed out the range of the Chiracahuas, and Cochise's Stronghold, and the peaks of the Galiuros and other natural sceneries; I had showed him mesquite and yucca, and mescal and soapweed, and sage, and sacatone and niggerheads and all the other known vegetables of the region.
A gray jackrabbit, thinking himself concealed by a very creditable imitation of a sacatone hummock, sat motionless not seventy yards away. After lunch we moved out leisurely to get our one bird apiece. Some of the girls followed us. We were now epicures of shooting, and each let many birds pass before deciding to fire.
I was not surprised to hear him nicknamed Sacatone Bill. "Just ask him how he got that game foot," suggested Johnny Stone to me in an undertone, so, of course, I did not. Later someone told me that the lameness resulted from his refusal of an urgent invitation to return across a river. Mr. Sacatone Bill happened not to be riding his own horse at the time.
"Where did you get this, son?" The man, a Chiracahua hand named Curley something-or-other, indicated a sacatone bottom a hundred yards to the west. "You got good eyes, son," Buck complimented him. "Think you can make out the trail?" "Do'no," said Curley. "Used to do a considerable of tracking." "Horses!" commanded Buck. We followed Curley afoot while several men went to saddle up.
We must just lie low and trust to Providence." A man was playing on the mouth organ. He played excellently well, with all sorts of variations and frills. We smoked in silence. The deep rumble of the cattle filled the air with its diapason. Always the shrill coyotes raved out in the mesquite. Sacatone Bill had finished his meal, and had gone to sit by Jed Parker, his old friend.
Dimly I was conscious of soapweed, sacatone, mesquite, as we passed them. They were abreast and gone before I could think of them or how they were to be dodged. Two antelope bounded away to the left; birds rose hastily from the grasses. A sudden chirk, chirk, chirk, rose all about me.
The ranch houses and their attendant trees look like toys; the bands of cattle and the men working them are as though viewed through the reverse lenses of a glass; and the very details of mesquite or sacatone flats, of alkali shallow or of oak grove are blended into broad washes of tone. But now the distant, galloping horse with its swaying mannikin charging on the ranch seemed to fill our world.
They talked together low-voiced. The evening grew, and the eastern sky silvered over the mountains in anticipation of the moon. Sacatone Bill suddenly threw back his head and laughed. "Reminds me of the time I went to Colorado!" he cried. "He's off!" whispered the Cattleman. A dead silence fell on the circle. Everybody shifted position the better to listen to the story of Sacatone Bill.
Like most men who ride I had very sketchy ideas of what three miles afoot is like at night in high heels. The latter affliction was common to both Miss Emory and myself. She had on a sort of bedroom slipper, and I wore the usual cowboy boots. We began to go footsore about the same time, and the little rolling volcanic rocks among the bunches of sacatone did not help us a bit.
But just as we were about to return to the ranch house we were arrested by a shout from one of the cowboys who had been projecting around the neighbourhood. He came running to us. In his hand he held a blade of sacatone on which he pointed out a single dark spot about the size of the head of a pin. Buck seized it and examined it closely. "Blood, all right," he said at last.
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